The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) have been consistently working to improve the uptake and usability of India’s Aadhaar-based e-KYC ecosystem.
Recently, on 13th September 2021, RBI released a circular stating that all RBI-governed entities, such as NBFCs, Payment System Providers, and Payment System Participants, can now apply for their own AUA / KUA license to use Aadhaar’s e-KYC and Aadhaar Authentication services of UIDAI.
Alternatively this circular also permits all such entities to register as a Sub-KUA with existing AUA / KUA entities. This thus opens enough doors for RBI-governed entities to initiate and complete the KYC of their customers in a paperless and secure manner.
In conjunction with this development, UIDAI has also released a draft regulation that highlights the proposed pricing structure to address the concerns of industry participants around the pricing of e-KYC service which is presently pegged at Rs. 20/- per transaction.
The revised pricing of Aadhaar Authentication Services mentioned in the draft regulation is as follows:
1. The proposed pricing will be as low as Rs. 3/- per transaction for e-KYC and Rs. 0.50 for Aadhaar Authentication for all RBI-governed entities.
2. e-KYC Authentication is proposed to be priced at Re. 1/- per transaction for Telcos, considering the high transaction volumes of the telecom industry.
3. No Authentication transaction done by or on behalf of the Central and State Government will be charged.
To Sum It Up
In our opinion, these amendments will play a major role in altering the landscape of paperless KYC and will definitely lead to more industry participation as it permits more ecosystem stakeholders to subscribe to this service at a significantly lower cost.
Please feel free to get in touch with our colleague Amit Joshi at amit@eastcs.com for further queries on these new amendments or if you’d like to learn more about ECS’s comprehensive e-KYC solutions suite.